Advice on Video Card (mainly for 2.0)

Currently have a Geforce 250, have had it for a couple of years, and it's been holding XIV up pretty good, but I think it's time that I upgraded. My budget is around $150~$225 roughly, and haven't really been keeping up to date with the video card selections out there.

I've heard that ATI cards run better with AMD processors (i have a 6 core 2.9ghz) but I typically use Nvidia cards. If anyone has some advice on a purchase, would be appreciated. I usually use newegg or tigerdirect btw. Thanks :)

** It's for a PCI-E 2.0 slot

The only real Nvidia choice in that price range is the 560ti which is a great card.

You might be able to find a GTX 570 for ~230 which is also a really good choice:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127682

I'm typically nvidia only as well so maybe someone else can weigh in with ATI options.

Yes, ATI AMD cards are not only cheaper than Nvidia, is also better preformance for AMD chips :)


It looks like Newegg still selling 6870 Sapphire brand! Go for that as im currently using one now :)

but ofcourse the 7870 is awesome too.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102981

It seems both those Sapphires are 2.1 or 3.0 for the PCI-E slot, so that's unfortunate. However, that's good that they are both cheaper and run better with my cpu, so I appreciate the advice ^^ I'll see if there's a slight lower end sapphire that uses 2.0

I'm not the biggest fan of ATI cards after two in a row crapped out on me.

I have a 560Ti now and it works fantastic, the 570 just recently lowered in price too. Of course considering your chip-set is you might want to consider that Sapphire though.

Auh.. sadly starting from 6k series, they using 2.1 PCI-e and above!

but yes as Quesse spoken earlier, go for Nvidia 570's and omg.. i see EVGA 570 for 259.99!

If you ever decide to up your budget by a bit, I do recommend the GTX 660 TI. They go for $299, and I recently jumped on one when they came out. Runs XIV fine at max settings at 1920x1080.

It comes with Borderlands 2 for free also, so if you also had that planned to buy, it'll save ya $60. Just a thought, it really is a fantastic card.

Also worth noting, a PCI E 3.0 card works fine on a 2.0 slot. The loss in framerate is at most like, 1 fps.

You should see if your motherboard had an integrated graphics chipset as well when making your decision between ATi and Nvidia. Often if you match the onboard chipset with your PCI graphics card mfg the two will create a faux SLI / Crossfire link increasing the available graphics memory and processing power.

It's the only way my wife is able to run XIV decently with her old 9600GT.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by darkm0d

If you ever decide to up your budget by a bit, I do recommend the GTX 660 TI. They go for $299, and I recently jumped on one when they came out. Runs XIV fine at max settings at 1920x1080.

It comes with Borderlands 2 for free also, so if you also had that planned to buy, it'll save ya $60. Just a thought, it really is a fantastic card.

Also worth noting, a PCI E 3.0 card works fine on a 2.0 slot. The loss in framerate is at most like, 1 fps.

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Now thats some valuable information, I didn't know they can work together like that. Just read some other sites to confirm, and they said pretty much the same thing, that there is barely any notice in a downgrade of performance for using 3.0 card on a 2.1 or 2.0 motherboard. Thanks ^^

I know that we on the forums are very knowledgeable about the graphics requirements for 2.0 down to the recommended clock frequency and shaders, because we've been giving this information.